The Bears’ bizarre clock management at the end of Thursday’s game in Detroit became the story of the Lions’ 23-20 victory and diverted attention from the way the Lions left the door open for the Bears to stage a comeback

The Lions dominated the first half, amassing 279 yards on 47 offensive plays, while the Bears managed 53 yards on 19 offensive plays, which didn’t result in a first down until the final minute of the second quarter. However, the Lions only turned that lead into 16 points, and the Bears outscored the home team 20-7 after halftime, giving themselves a chance for a miracle comeback.

A penalty and a sack set the stage for the clock error that helped the Lions to their 11th win of the season, and that result was the most important thing to head coach Dan Campbell.

“If you’re not careful, you start evaluating your own victories, and that’s good because you have those standards. The way you think you should play, by your own standards, by what you have, has nothing to do with the opponent,” Campbell said, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “If you’re not careful, you start to go too far down and then you start to take the victories for granted. And ultimately, man, this is a good win against an opponent that has struggled every week, and this was the third game in a row, a divisional game, that these guys got there. So we did what we had to do to win. And we’ll clean up the other things that cost us some points. I’m not worried about that. But I’m going to take this W and I’m not going to do it I’m losing sleep over this.”

The bigger picture for the Lions is that they are now 11-1 and remain in control of their chance to be at the top of the NFC playoffs. It’s a nice place to stay, even if the journey turned out to be rockier than anyone would have liked.